Monday, May 23, 2016

Shed Space is a new exhibition running at the Old Fire Station in Oxford which "celebrates the role of the humble garden shed in the creative industries, past and present". It features a full-size shed in the gallery with green roof, while inside
the shed there is a scale model showing an urban garden and
shed scene, put together by art and architecture students from
Oxford Brookes University. Among them is a ‘Sweetie Shed’ designed
by architecture student Katie Reilly who describes it as “An edible
escape for children in a yummy playhouse at the bottom of the garden
where imagination runs wild and friendships blossom.”

Co-organiser Jeni
Burnell, who is also a researcher at Oxford Brookes’ Centre for
Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) said: “The humble garden
shed has always featured as a backdrop in the creative industries being
used by music composers and authors through to engineers and industrial
designer Recently the shed has undergone somewhat of a revival
with people setting up home offices and creative escapes at the bottom
of their garden. This exhibition celebrates that creativity and captures
the enjoyment around such endeavours.” There are ongoing details at the exhibition blog.

During the exhibition, various 'makers in residence' are transforming the
shed into a ‘making space’ for workshops including DaisyWebb next Friday and Saturday who will produce a series of illustrations which consider the identity of sheds as both domestic and natural (Click here for her workshop), furniture makers Jan Waterston, Sam Bolt and Freya Whamond in June who will be
providing an insight into the workshop of a designer maker (Click here for their workshop)
and in July basketmaker Sherry Doyal will work on a collection inspired by Charles Darwin’s orchid research (Click here for her workshop).